Russian Invasion of Ukraine Megathread

[Tacitus Kilgore]

I don't know for sure but I'm pretty sure soldiers have never needed passports to participate in military operations abroad. The US doesn't so I highly doubt Russia does.

No, if another country is invading your country all that passport shit goes right out the window. No one needs a passport to fuck your country up.

 

[ForTheHoard]

Iirc in the US, military ID qualifies as passport,

They stopped letting military cross the border with military ID in the year or two following 9/11.

 

[Tacitus Kilgore]

Keeping the stink ditch open for business isn't much of a life tranny.

Anyway, here's a poor ostrich trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
View attachment 3319809

That ostrich better run. The Russians supply and logistics game sucks so they will try to kill and eat that ostrich I imagine. To them it's just a big chicken.

 

[F-35 Lightning II]

They stopped letting military cross the border with military ID in the year or two following 9/11.

Are you sure, I know for a fact because me and a friend went into Canada and he only had his military ID.

 

[ForTheHoard]

Are you sure, I know for a fact because me and a friend went into Canada and he only had his military ID.

It might only apply to Mexico. I never tried sneaking into Canada in the middle of the night.

 

[Aidan]

It depends on what they're doing. The vast majority of the time you don't, but I'm aware of a joint training exercise with the British where all the US troops involved had to get passports. I don't remember the specific reason why, but I only encountered it once.

I mean yeah there are circumstances but groundpounding isn't one of those circumstances for the US.

Iirc in the US, military ID qualifies as passport, but I think they are saying, that because Russia hasn't called it an invasion, just a military exercise/training, they still need a passport.

It doesn't qualify as a passport though many places have arrangements to accept it similarly though it's usually contingent on military orders as far as I know. Russians needing a passport to invade Ukraine sounds like some retarded fake news cope someone would make up to try to make a story of Russians trying not to fight. Just as dumb as CNN running a story that some Russian officer went to his command and said he disagrees and won't fight so formally resigned his commission.

I'm personally not believing anything like that until it's substantiated with something but we all know it never will be.

 

[ForTheHoard]

some Russian officer went to his command and said he disagrees and won't fight so formally resigned his commission.

Do Russian officers even have the privilege of resigning their commission?

 

[Su-27 Flanker-B]

or whatever, they're running out of crews trained to operate with t-72's.

I believe T-72 is basic training tank in russia, so every tankman would know how to operate it.

Also what is even the point in the discussion about ID? They are invading. Even if some soldier tried to weasel his way out with some legalese, he is going to get ass kicked and told to pack up, they are driving at dawn. If you are invading you are directly ignoring sovereignity of a state, its a no man land. You dont need pass to be there, as much as you dont need to have a pass to enter international waters.

 

[Su-27 Flanker-B]

Do Russian officers even have the privilege of resigning their commission?

You can do that but most likely you are going to jail, in best case scenario.

 

[Tacitus Kilgore]

I found these videos on YouTube where this Russian guy is talking about the effects of the sanctions on Russia. The Russiaboo vatniggers are wrong. The sanctions are having an effect.

https://youtu.be/1vQgx28vNsg

Russia can't really afford to fight the war for long. They only have a few months of currency reserves left. All their other reserves are in foreign countries, and they have been frozen. They will use the currency reserves they have to fund the war effort which means they will go through them quickly.

From the videos I have watched Russia had planned to take Ukraine and move into Moldova. The Russians want to create a secure frontier. They believe the only way Russia will be secure is if it's enemies or threats are pushed as far away from Russia as possible. The farther an army would have to travel to get to Moscow the more secure Russia would be. Peter Zeihan said they also planned to try and take some of the Baltic states back, but they are NATO members. I don't entirely believe this because it just sounds a bit crazy. If they attack a NATO country, it will cause the US to get involved. If the US didn't get involved, then NATO would basically fall apart. The only thing I can think of is the Russians started believing their own copium BS and about the West getting weaker and our economy is about to collapse. This is common Russian copium. They sit over there in Russia seething and talking about how the US is getting weaker and our economy and government will collapse. They invaded Ukraine thinking the Ukrainians would greet them as liberators and that didn't happen.

But even if the Russians had these grand plans for this kind of war Ukraine has shown they don't have the military capability for it and most likely never will. The Soviet army and the modern Russian army are setup for defense and not an offensive war. They can't even get supplies to their forces 90 miles from their own border.

The other thing Russia wants is to be a superpower again. You can't be a superpower with the GDP of Italy. It just doesn't work that way. The idea is that they would take over these Eastern European countries and use them as slave states to boost their GDP somehow. Like they used to as the Soviet Union. The only way to be a powerful country in the minds of people in control in Russia is to control the territories, the people and the resources in them. If they were capable of pulling this off, they would probably do some Russification in them.

The Russians have this concept called Russkiy Mir. Mir means World and Peace in Russian. So, you can see where this is going. The Russkiy Mir concept says that that once Russia is in control of the world there will finally be peace, and everything will be great. By world they probably mean Eastern Europe. Unless the Russians had even grander plans that their Ukrainian failure has made them rethink. The Russians just want to take back their former slave states so they can be a superpower again and secure their country from invasion.

But this doesn't make a bit of sense because they have nuclear weapons. If an invasion force stepped across the Russian border, it would be nuclear war time. That's basically what the Russian nuclear doctrine says. Nuclear weapons get used against threats to the Russian state. The Russian nuclear doctrine used to be even more expanded than that and the Soviet doctrine was pretty scary. The Soviets believed in using nukes tactically in Europe. Putin brought the Russian nuclear doctrine back down to what it is today. No one is going to invade Russia because they have nuclear weapons. I imagine any country who would try would expect to get nuked and they would just nuke Russia back in return.

If you look at the way the European countries around Russia were going militarily, they were shrinking the sizes of their militaries. Germany only has about 200 tanks. The UK has no real military anymore. There are no real threats to Russia's security, so their paranoia just seems unjustified and ridiculous. Of course, that will probably change now thanks the Russian war in Ukraine. That brings up the fact that NATO will most likely get two new members with Sweden and Finland. Finland being the country that proves Russia's excuses for invading Ukraine are total nonsense. There will be a NATO country right on their border anyway. There is nothing they can do about it either. Murmansk is home to one of their naval bases if I remember from my days of reading Tom Clancy and Tom Clancy clone novels and it's only 113 miles from the Finnish border. It's not Moscow but still that's pretty close.

Nothing about the invasion of Ukraine makes any real sense but I'm not a Russian political leader in his early 70's that wants to be in control of a superpower. I don't know exactly what the Russians plans were all I can do is speculate and listen to what other people think. But I do know it's been one huge embarrassing failure for the Russians. It even has China thinking differently about any action against Tiawan. Supposedly Taiwan is working on getting a nuclear weapon.

But it's definitely hurting the Russians more than it is the US.

 

[Based Boy]

The problem is that I'm a fucking former lib and Ron Paul 2008 convert because 4chan told me he'd make anime real. I've been bitching and moaning about every single conflict, yes even Yemen which "nobody talks about" (we lolberts bring up Yemen all the fucking time). Ever heard of Scott Horton? He'll rant for hours about Yemen alone.
I didn't apply the standards differently. Neither did all the millions who disagreed with Iraq. Before Trump, it was Bush Jr.'s picture people with paint with Hitler's moustache on protest signs.
I don't get to be lectured by that fuckface shill. Who doesn't care about the conflicts.

It's strange to me that you would namedrop people such as Horton and Paul, but in your arguments you always diminish the role that US played in bringing about this very conflict or dismiss any concerns Russia may have about Ukraine joining NATO or about NATO expansion in general.
To quote Horton (I hope we are talking about the same Horton, if not, correct me.):

[About invasion of Ukraine by Russia.] No. It was unreasonable. But it was rational. A reaction. Understandable not in the sympathetic sense, but in the strictly literal one.
The responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine by Russia belongs to Putin, but the new Cold War it takes place within is primarily the responsibility of the U.S. government and its leaders over the last 30 years.
And when I say 30 years, I mean it. Just this last Christmas day was the 30th anniversary of the last day of the USSR. The Communists’ red flag came down, the Red, White and Blue Russian standard went up in its place. The Cold War with the Soviet Union was over. The evil empire was dead.
But then the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden ruined our great peace and victory at the end of the last Cold War. Instead, they got us into this mess. This was primarily due to the policies of NATO expansion, tearing up important nuclear treaties, the installation of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, overthrowing multiple governments friendly to Russia, including Ukraine twice in 10 years, spending the last 5 years sending sophisticated arms to Ukraine and increasing harassment by American Navy ships and Air Force planes in the Black, Baltic and Okhotsk seas. They were warned. They thought it would be fine. It wasn’t.

Here is full article. (I believe it is just a transcript of his speech, which is present in the article.)
Here is the quote from Paul:

When the Bush Administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea. Nearly two decades after the end of both the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War, expanding NATO made no sense. NATO itself made no sense.
Explaining my “no” vote on a bill to endorse the expansion, I said at the time:

NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary… This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia and Ukraine that came to power as a result of US-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution and Rose Revolution.

Providing US military guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia can only further strain our military. This NATO expansion may well involve the US military in conflicts unrelated to our national interest…

Unfortunately, as we have seen this past week, my fears have come true. One does not need to approve of Russia’s military actions to analyze its stated motivation: NATO membership for Ukraine was a red line it was not willing to see crossed. As we find ourselves at risk of a terrible escalation, we should remind ourselves that it didn’t have to happen this way. There was no advantage to the United States to expand and threaten to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep. There is no way to argue that we are any safer for it.
NATO itself was a huge mistake.

Here is full article.
It's fine for you to be against any war in general, but don't claim that there was no reasons for it outside of Russian "enrichment" by seizure of natural resources of Ukraine, or that US and Ukraine itself could not do anything to avoid it.
Also, if i understand correctly, you are interested in use of suicide drones, so i will give a little bit of trivia to this video.

War is a fucked up business.
View attachment 3320166

Russian Kamikaze drone.
The work of the MTR of Russia to prevent an attempted breakthrough in the village of Pavlovka, near the Donetsk region. May 8, 2022. The blow was delivered with the help of the Cube kamikaze UAV, objective control is carried out with the ZALA UAV, the enemy’s losses amounted to 9 people.

Here is the same video with slowdown added near the end.

---

And another one. Plea from 2 company of 46th separate rifle battalion.

Spoiler: Translation

Operator: Let's go.
Soldier One: 2 company of 46th separate rifle battalion. (Don't understand what is said at the beginning, probably something about from where they came from) after that we were transferred into Lugansk Region in a place of battles, where we were given orders to take positions and defend near village Komishivaha. After we came to our positions we were bombarded with mortars. Despite that, we took positions and started to entrench. During this time we were not supplied neither with food nor water. We procured water ourselves. We did not have radios. Only brigade commander and company commander have them. Medical services did not come to us, because of that one of our soldiers died. We were bombarded with GRADs, after which commander of the company decided to abandon our positions. During the retreat everybody managed to get out. After we abandoned our positions we were covered by [phosphorus](i believe he says this, but maybe he means something else.). If we did not abandon our positions, absolutely nobody would survive from those who stands here today. Our commanders want to declare us deserters. [We ask our leadership to make our commanders make the right choice.](not sure about this.) Thank you.
Soldier Two: We came against artillery and aviation with this kind of weaponry. This gun and this gun, and this is our newest development with which we should fight against helicopters, that rained on us godlessly, and artillery, which , the longer, the bigger caliber, leveled our trenches with dirt. After mighty, precise bombardments on our positions we decided to retreat...

And sale of humanitarian aid in Kharkov. It supposed to be given free of charge to citizens. I assume it came from Poland.

Spoiler: Translation

[Thieves!!! ATB Kharkov Industrial district.]
Shortly about where humanitarian aid is going, please. I was receiving it at humanitarian aid post and now i see how it is being sold. There is a code with which you can find this product and confirm that this is humanitarian aid.

 

[Su-27 Flanker-B]

@Tacitus Kilgore
You forgot about gold? And because one video = entire country?

Hell, at this point you can believe this russian retard who keeps screaming into his youtube void RUSSIA DOESNT WANT WAR AND IS ON BRINK OF COLLAPSE ever since the start of it.

 

[Tacitus Kilgore]

@Tacitus Kilgore
You forgot about gold? And because one video = entire country?

Hell, at this point you can believe this russian retard who keeps screaming into his youtube void RUSSIA DOESNT WANT WAR AND IS ON BRINK OF COLLAPSE ever since the start of it.

Well usually what effects one part of a country effects the rest. I think the video makes it clear that the price increases are happening all across Russia.

The Russian economy isn't there yet. But it will collapse soon. The Russians have done all they can do to try and save the economy but it's just not enough.

 

[Regenbogen]

I believe T-72 is basic training tank in russia, so every tankman would know how to operate it.

There's a limited pool of manpower that can be used in certain moments, but in general yes. Strengthens the theory of it being something for the Lugansk and Donetsk militias.

 

[Regenbogen]

Well usually what effects one part of a country effects the rest. I think the video makes it clear that the price increases are happening all across Russia.

The Russian economy isn't there yet. But it will collapse soon. The Russians have done all they can do to try and save the economy but it's just not enough.

Yeah yeah, and China will soon follow supposedly. If we're being serious what awaits us is a global economic recession by 2025.

 

[Wy4M]

Zelenski's right hand man — Arestovich didn't have a good day and says "hi" to western colleagues.
Your browser is not able to display this video.
"How do I say it delicately.. go fuck yourselves you fucking cunts with your offers to trade Ukrainian land a bit. Are you fucking mad? We've got blood- the kids are dying, soldiers, infantrymen are catching artillery shells with their bodies, and we are told to sacrifice some land. Here :raises iphone:, bite on this. This will never happen."

He is either referencing Kissinger or Italian peace treaty proposal, AFAIK.

And as usual, till last khokhol.

A few days ago Lucy Arestovich posted on his telegram a painting of himself.

https://t.me/O_Arestovich_official/2107

https://archive.ph/okfWM

Auto-translate:
- Judging by the requests of citizens to me, they consider God to be someone like my deputy in political, military, humanitarian and economic affairs.
While the real situation is quite different.
We must convey the truth to society! ..

I am God's substitute for all these and three million other issues.
Please do not confuse, otherwise I will not be able to solve all the questions.
Thank you.

Lucy driving a Tiger I tank. Number 131, it is currently the only operational Tiger I in the world.:

 

[White_N]

Allied troops raised the Victory banner, flags of Russia and the DPR over the administration of Liman.


The "O" group has already liberated most of the city. The whole center is already in their hands, including the administration building.

Ukrainian Ambassador Melnyk again criticizes Germany.

This time he does not like the pace of arming the Kiev army by Germany.

"German weapons are on the way," he tweeted and attached a snail with a bullet.

 

[The Foldless Brain]

Kiev being turned into Kyiv and then Kyjiw is a crime against language.

 

[KinoIsBackOnTheMenu]

Allied troops raised the Victory banner, flags of Russia and the DPR over the administration of Liman.


The "O" group has already liberated most of the city. The whole center is already in their hands, including the administration building.

View attachment 3322083
View attachment 3322084

Liman was a fairly important town during the Battle of Slavyansk in 2014. It is only about 15 miles north too. I believe Slavyansk and Kramatorsk (to its immediate south) are now the only two major cities still under Ukrainian control in Donetsk, now that Mariupol is gone. Ukrainian defences might collapse when Liman is fully captured similar to the capture of Popasna, since Russians have not really made much progress in that region for a few weeks now.

 

[White_N]

Liman was a fairly important town during the Battle of Slavyansk in 2014. It is only about 15 miles north too. I believe Slavyansk and Kramatorsk (to its immediate south) are now the only two major cities still under Ukrainian control in Donetsk, now that Mariupol is gone. Ukrainian defences might collapse when Liman is fully captured similar to the capture of Popasna, since Russians have not really made much progress in that region for a few weeks now.

I think the Ukrainians will still fight for Mikalaevka. By the way, the Russian troops are advancing to Avdiivka. Oh, how many memories.
Most likely they are just consolidating positions, but maybe this is the beginning of the advance to Kramatorsk?